NEI Nuclear Notes

You knew it would only be a matter of time before Joe Mangano resurfaced. This time, he's brought his brand of junk science to California's Central Coast in order to make some scurrilous claims about the Diablo Canyon Power Plant . This time, a story appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press (paywall), which is where NEI's Steve Kerekes steps into the picture: While antinuclear groups hail Mr. Mangano’s study, others argue that the science behind Mr. Mangano’s report is far from settled. “(Mr. Mangano) is a traveling roadshow of fearmongering,” said Steve Kerekes, director of media relations with the Nuclear Energy Institute. “Once to twice a year he pops up in some corner of the country,” Mr. Kerekes said. “It’s always a similar scenario: he throws a bunch of data at the wall and sees what sticks, but there’s no direct cause and effect between the data and the nuclear facility he is smearing.” Mr. Kerekes said his organization has regularly debunked Mr. Mangano’s ...

For years, we've been telling you about freelance anti-nuclear activist Joe Mangano and how he leverages flawed research to stoke fears about nuclear energy. Now, another serious science writer has taken a closer look at Mangano's studies and says it's part of a larger trend of agenda-driven science being peddled to the press. On newsstands now is the April 2014 issue of Popular Mechanics . There you'll find a feature (yet to be published online) titled, "Junk Science." In it, Science Editor Sarah Fecht investigates a claim that Mangano and Janette Sherman made in 2012 that 14,000 American deaths could be linked to fallout from Fukushima Daiichi . Interviewed for the piece is Dr. Robert Emery of the University of Texas at Houston : "I read the thing and was taken aback," says Emery, who has a doctorate in public health and is a licensed health physicist. The study implied fallout from Fukushima caused 484 deaths in Houston. If there had been...

Now that we're in the first few days of the period of extended operations for Indian Point Unit 2 , local anti-nuclear activists are doing their best to turn up the heat. After a smattering of events last week, they've decided to haul out one of the big guns in the form of actor and periodic anti-nuclear activist Alec Baldwin . On Friday night, Baldwin, who is scheduled to begin hosting a Friday night talk show on MSNBC later this month, will take part in a panel discussion about Indian Point at Rockland Community College -- an event that will double as a fundraiser for the Radiation and Public Health Project, an organization run by Joseph Mangano. Readers of NEI Nuclear Notes will probably recognize that name. Mangano continually attempts to draw a straight line between nuclear power plant emissions and negative health impacts. Mangano makes these claims despite the fact that nuclear power plants only account for .1% of the radiation that a typical American is exposed t...

The story in the April 2014 issue of Popular Mechanics that debunks Joe Mangano's anti-nuclear research has just been published online and has gotten some additional attention -- including a link from UT-Knoxville law professor Glenn Reynolds , better known as Instapundit . There are plenty of great quotes in the Popular Mechanics piece, but this passage really sticks out: The Mangano and Sherman paper is a prime example of a troubling new trend in which junk science is becoming harder to distinguish from rigorous research. It is an example of activists using the trappings of science to influence public opinion and policy. Today there are cottage industries that produce and disseminate skewed research in publications that masquerade as legitimate science journals. Celebrities and mainstream media outlets then tout the results, so that even retracted or clearly biased research can reach larger audiences than ever before. These studies cause real harm—for instance, by denoun...

More than a few folks have passed along a news clip to us from The Chattanoogan detailing another " study " by Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) claiming that they've discovered higher mortality rates in populations living near the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant . We don't believe this study is credible. Mangano and company are making these claims despite the fact that nuclear power plants only account for .1% of the radiation that a typical American is exposed to over the course of a year . Meanwhile, exposures from life saving medical procedures like CT scans and X-Rays account for about 50% . Putting that aside, a number of third party experts and journalists have regularly taken turns debunking Mangano's research. In 2011, Michael Moyer of Scientific American said the following about one Mangano study that claimed Americans were suffering from severe health effects in the wake ...

Mike Moyer, the writer at Scientific American who so expertly debunked Joe Mangano's "research" in June , had a chance to read the latest Mangano study that claimed 14,000 deaths in the U.S. were linked to fallout from Fukushima . The verdict: it's just another flawed study. No attempt is made at providing systematic error estimates, or error estimates of any kind. No attempt is made to catalog any biases that may have crept into the analysis, though a cursory look finds biases a-plenty (the authors are anti-nuclear activists unaffiliated with any research institution). The analysis assumes that the plume arrived on U.S. shores, spread everywhere, instantly, and started killing people immediately. It assumes that the “excess” deaths after March 20 are a real signal, not just a statistical aberration, and that every one of them is due to Fukushima radiation. Of course, as we pointed out yesterday, Mangano was forced to back off that last claim when pressed by a repor...

This time, the sledgehammer is delivered courtesy of Barbara Feder Ostrov's Health Journalism Blog . Like plenty of other folks, she was shocked at Joe Mangano's claims -- ones that he backed off from when under questioning from MedPage Today -- so she talked to some long-time medical journalists . Here's what Ivan Oransky of Reuters Health had to say about Mangano's research: I do use impact factor to judge journals, while accepting that it's an imperfect measure that is used in all sorts of inappropriate ways (and, for the sake of full disclosure, is a Thomson Scientific product, as in Thomson Reuters). I find it helpful to rank journals within a particular specialty. [...] I looked up the journal in question, and it's actually ranked 45th out of 58 in the Health Policy and Services category (in the social sciences rankings) and 59th out of 72 in the Health Care Sciences & Services category (in the science rankings). Here's Gary Schwitzer of Health Ne...

Another public health department has taken a closer look at Joe Mangano's work and determined it's fatally flawed. This time it's the Public Health Department of San Luis Obispo County, Califoria . You'll recall that Mangano most recently released a study claiming all sorts of ailments arose around Diablo Canyon in the wake of its opening. From the press release  ( our emphasis in bold ): “As the Health Officer for San Luis Obispo County, I take the health of our residents very seriously, and when a claim was made that excess cancer and infant mortality was occurring in our County, I made it an immediate priority to investigate further. However, upon examination of the report issued by the World Business Academy (WBA) of Santa Barbara, it became evident that flawed methodology and selective exclusion of populations of interest were used to achieve a result not consistent with standard scientific investigation and practice ” states Dr. Penny Borenstein, Health O...

What does it take for young nuclear professionals to get involved in campaigns to inform the public about the benefits of nuclear energy? Just hearing for themselves the kind of propaganda that is spread by anti-nuclear groups is enough to spur many to action. Like their colleagues that attended events in Georgia , Tennessee, and Virginia , North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) members in New Jersey were stunned by the rhetoric and misinformation presented at the “ Clinic Symposium on Campaign to Close Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant ” at Rutgers University last Friday, December 8. Nuclear Notes’ previous posts on this event are here , here , and here . Prior to the event, NA-YGN contacted Richard Webster of Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic to request a seat on the panel. While they were not completely denied, Webster did put some restrictions on their participation that are questionable in light of the qualifications and actual remarks of the selected speakers. Webst...

Just a few minutes ago, I received the following statement from Dr. Robert Emery, Vice President for Safety, Health, Environment & Risk Management at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston concerning Dr. Joseph Mangano's recent study on fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility reaching the U.S. “We aggressively monitored for the presence of environmental radioactivity in Houston following the Fukushima event and worked closely with local public health authorities in the event we detected any threat to public health. We never detected any elevated radiation levels. I don’t see any evidence to supports the assertion made by this report that the additional 484 deaths in Houston in 2011 could in any way be related to radioactivity from Fukushima - we never detected any.” "Moreover the study bases its conclusion on the comparison of data from deaths in the U.S. in 2010 and 2011. Using this method you really can’t determine the specific ...

NA-YGN member April Schilpp alerted me to a “ Clinic Symposium on Campaign to Close Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant ” at Rutgers University next Friday, December 8. And it will be hosted by actor Alec Baldwin—maybe he came back after discovering that nearly 80% of France’s electricity is generated by nuclear power plants? Anyway, the agenda is: 1)Richard Webster, Attorney, Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic and Eastern Environmental Law Center: Safety issues 2) Bob Alvarez, Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy 1993-1999: Spent fuel dangers and general vulnerability 3) Julia Huff: Attorney, Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic and Executive Director, Eastern Environmental Law Center: Environmental issues associated with Oyster Creek operations: marine impacts 4) Joe Mangano, Executive Director, Radiation and Public Health Project: Health issues 5) Paul Gunter, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) – Exelon’s pattern of deception and incompetence 6) Questions – t...